Before we dive into this recipe, let's spend a minute talking about trinities in cooking. In cajun cooking, the holy trinity is onion, bell pepper, and celery. Mirepoix is a French trinity of onion, carrots and celery. Italian soffritto also uses onion, carrots and celery with additions of garlic, fennel and parsley. While the Spanish sofrito uses onion, bell pepper, garlic and tomatoes.
At the root of all these cuisines is the humble onion. I also love peppers and since we're going for big flavor with minimal calories, starting a dish with onions and peppers is a great leap forward toward our goal.
I get a pan going with a little spray for the veggies. I add salt and pepper in the middle, super easy. The chicken I actually use frozen pre-cooked chicken breast for convenience. I start by microwaving them, then season heavily and add them into the veggie pan.
There's tons of ways to cook rice. I choose the most convenient: Uncle Ben's ready rice. Microwaves in 90 seconds, toss with a little lime juice. The whole bag is only 380 calories and each bag makes two portions.
Top with plenty of light sour cream and lime juice. The whole filling plate comes in between 400 and 450 cals.
(Niraj pointed out I forgot the hot sauce. Yep, definitely needs that for sure. I like habanero or smoked tabasco. At Chipotle or Qdoba I add salsa verde, but at home just stick to hot sauce.
Today I paired it with some dried mango slices (130 cals) and a fig bar (140 cals) from Trader Joe's to complete my lunch.
This sounds great, especially if you add some hot sauce! Even more flavor with no additional calories :)
ReplyDeleteI can't believe this is the one time I forgot the hot sauce. I always add hot sauce!
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, I've been having this multiple times a week for a little while and most of the time I haven't even had the onions and peppers. Just chicken, rice, sour cream and hot sauce is pretty darn great.
Although Cholula is a longtime favorite, for this dish I alternate between habenero sunshine and smoked tabasco.
Literally the first time I forgot to add hot sauce. I was so concerned with plating and getting a good picture that I was thrown off my rhythm. Thanks for the reminder!
Haha, nice. And yeah, so many directions you can go when your base is mostly chicken and rice...teriyaki sauce (might have too many cals?), salsa, peanut sauce (with some spritzes of sesame oil)...
ReplyDeleteI'm also a longtime Cholula fan...actually just this past weekend I spotted and had to grab their Chili Garlic version. Haven't gotten a chance to try it yet.